Caine Mutiny, The - Herman Wouk [118]
“And so we are going to have the unexpected pleasure of hearing about the Novel in World War II-not from me-but from a young man who may well write the novel of World War II-Lieutenant Thomas Keefer, of the U.S.S. Caine.”
Keefer acknowledged the loud applause with a charming smile, and began to talk easily. The girls seemed to soak up the speech, but Maryk derived nothing from it but the sad reassurance that his flunking grades in English had been well deserved. In the tangle of names-Kafka, Proust, Hemingway, Stein, Huxley, Crane, Zweig, Mann, Joyce, Wolfe-he recognized only one, Hemingway. He dimly recalled having started to read a twenty-five-cent reprint of a Hemingway novel, attracted by the cover picture of a naked girl sitting up in bed talking to a fully dressed soldier; but the tale had seemed too well written to be a sex story, and he had abandoned it.
Keefer talked for half an hour, leaving Maryk completely baffled and humiliated. Then the girls swirled and frothed around the speaker in a circle four or five deep, while Maryk leaned against the wall and conducted a dry stumbling conversation with a couple of the least good-looking ones, whose interest in him was confined to such information as he could give them about Keefer. Maryk wondered whether this was the fulfillment of his foreboding: an afternoon in which his nose had been rubbed painfully in his own ignorance and stupidity. He wasn’t sure he could ever talk naturally with Keefer again.
After a while the novelist captured two of the prettiest girls, and they went to dinner in a candlelit French restaurant overlooking the bay. Maryk telephoned the ship’s office, a routine check at eight o’clock. He came back to the table gnawing his lips; his eyes were prominent. “They want us back aboard, Tom.”
“What! When?”
“Right now.”
“What’s the dope?”
“I spoke to Jellybelly. He wouldn’t say. Gorton wants us back.”
The girls uttered tiny chirps of dismay. They drove away unhappily in their red Buick convertible, and the officers hailed a cab. Keefer cursed the bad luck and offered wild conjectures about the summons. The first lieutenant sat silent, rubbing his wet palms on his coat sleeves.
In the glare of a yellow floodlight at the foot of the gangplank, Gorton and Harding stood beside a knot of hooded welders crouched over their blue flames on the deck. “What’s the dope?” yelled Keefer, trampling behind Maryk down the gangplank.
“You’d better get on the ball, Mr. Maryk,” said Gorton with a crafty grin. “The exec is supposed to keep the duty officer informed of his whereabouts. I’ve been calling every hotel bar in town for you-”
The first lieutenant screwed up his blunt features. “What are you talking about?”
“You heard me. You’ve got it, Steve,” said Gorton. “Adams and I received our orders this afternoon. You’re the new exec of the Caine.” He took the astounded officer’s hand and shook heartily.
“Me?” stammered Maryk. “Me?”
“It’s happening in the whole squadron, Steve. Over on the Simon a bird who made lieutenant in October has got exec. And their new skipper is a reserve lieutenant. The whole deal is busting wide open. We’ve got a night’s work ahead of us-”
“Did I get orders?” Keefer interrupted eagerly.
“No, and you ain’t ever going to, Tom. This does it. They peeled off Carmody, too. You and Steve will ride her into the boneyard. You’ll be exec in a year.”
Keefer took off his white hat and dashed it to the deck. It bounced, rolled to the side, and disappeared. Gorton leaned over the life lines. “Dear me,” he said, “smack into a puddle of bilge. Looks like the new senior watch officer needs a new hat.”
“God damn the Caine,” said Keefer, “and strike everyone aboard it, including me, with a curse.”
Maryk peered gloomily around at the old ship, as though he were reporting aboard for the first time. “This is it,” he thought-but he could not have said what he meant by “it.”
It was not hard for Mrs. Keith to see that her Willie was not the same lad who had left for Yosemite three days earlier. They were having dinner at the Mark